Epiphany Plus One

Many years ago, I heard Isabel Allende speak. One of the things she shared with her audience is that she always starts her novels in January. I'd remembered that she started on January 6th - Epiphany, and I carried that date with me as a significant date for serious writers until just now, when fact-checking brought it to my attention that she starts on January 8th, not the 6th, and not because of Epiphany but for her own personal superstitious reasons. 

So today marks a point between my false memory and my new knowledge. Which sounds symbolic, right? What is each day if not a marker between insufficient data and new input? I wrote the below this morning, or some slight variation of it. It's a little about the dangers of not-quite-forgetting something.

You missed Epiphany this year.

This seems telling.

You knew it was coming, that day

of marking something – was it the wise men

reaching their destination, finding it,

as Eliot suggested, “satisfactory”?

Or was it God incarnate, holy infant flesh and blood,

as impossible to conceive

– you can’t help the pun –

as dark matter at CERN?

There are things you haven’t taken the time to ponder,

and you are left feeling stupid

as a foreigner who cannot speak the language.

Stranger in a strange land in a new year,

the miracle approaching,

the miracle passed,

and you with a crick in your neck

from looking back too suddenly.